1970 Dodge Super Bee Restoration Part 2 - That's Not A Good Thing

"I wasn't planning on having to repair rust in that area." That was one of the statements made right after we stripped all of the removable parts from our project 'Bee and found some hidden rust. As a matter of fact, it was said a couple of different times about a couple of different locations. Let's face it, every project car has rust that needs repaired. Sometimes that rust comes in some strange places. In this case, the rust we found was underneath the Dutchman panel (the panel between the rear window and trunk lid). It was bad enough, that repairing it wasn't an option; we needed to replace the panel.

No more than just a few years ago, if you needed to replace this panel, that meant hopefully finding a good used one. Now, however, the aftermarket has made new reproductions availableùbut what's the quality like? Let me begin by saying that it's great to be able to buy new metal to replace rust, and in this case, the piece we received from Roseville Moparts impressed us since (one), the metal was just as heavy (read: thick) as the original piece, and (two), the form of the piece looked to be right on. But let's not make everything sound all rosy and insinuate that the panel "fell" into place. During our install, we did run into a small problem. This is not to say that the metal was the problem, it means we had a problematic situation that we needed to overcome.

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Since all aftermarket sheet metal is reverse engineered, and every 30- or 40-year-old car will have variances in its build, this is where our situation manifested itself as you'll see in the captions.

Overall, we were more than satisfied with the fit and quality of the replacement panel, and like we said, we weren't sure if the situation we encountered was caused by the car or the replacement panel, but regardless, it was easily overcome. Keep in mind, this is rust repair/body work, nothing ever goes as planned.